This is home to the original ideas of the former Chief Executive of Somerset County Council. Here you may read his views and glean wisdom about the difficult task of transforming municipal institutions for the public good.

Howe About it?!

(public-i's foxy chief exec....mmmm!)

I hear strange voices

Dr Martin Griffiths

My Associates love our Affiliates!

Future Communities

(my site is SO much better!)

Shy and Retiring? Moi?

Does SAP work? Click to discover!

Best Partnership? Not Somerset

(we didn't win anything at all)

Any chance of another reference?

Any chance of a reference?

A knight in shining armour

My next boss?

Klick my Koruna

The Art of Spin

Panel Beaters

Starboard or Port?

WANTED FOR SUBVERSION

APRIL FOOLS DAY

Coming Soon to Somerset

Life is a Fitch

So we deliberately ignored their advice

A new customer?

Please join my club

My Second Favourite Organ

Thanks Maam!

I deserve one!

PEACE OFF

The Hangman from my home town

Party Time!

Why do the seagulls fly upside down in Cornwall?

Which part of the anatomy should fictititious bloggers have removed upon conviction

How much can endorphins enhance your life

How much should the County Council pay to let me go?

Should the County Council pay me to go?

How much will the people of Somerset be helped by the creation of SouthWest One?

Monday, 23 March 2009

Ouch its Crouch!

"I would guess that very few of us would have recognised how important the financial 'system' is to us in life. Yes, of course, we understood its financial relevance, whether in trade, in investment, in borrowing or whatever, but I bet there weren't many of us who realised how much the financial sector served as the bedrock to things not quite so financially driven, which included our whole social system. The conclusion that everyone seems to have come to is that the World's financial 'system' is broken, but the question is how many other 'systems' that rely on this financial bedrock are also broken? Take local government as an example. We have exactly the same problem as the man or woman in the high street, in that there are expectations placed upon us which are well above what can be afforded within the present 'system'. A lesson from the economic recession has been that our citizens' high standard of living was a sham and completely unaffordable as they relied too much on borrowing and not enough on good old fashioned Victorian values of spending only what was earned and nothing more. The trouble is that the same is true in local government and we know full well that within the present 'system' of delivering local government the finances available to it wont be nearly enough. So, as with the financial sector, if the money isn't available to furnish the current 'system' then it is the 'system' itself which must change and many councils, thank goodness, are already contemplating this. One of these changes has to be a step change in the way we conduct our business and even with all the good work we've done on multi-agency working, partnerships etc, there is still one fundamental flaw which is that we, as a sector, continue to be too organisationally centric, when we need to be far more place centric, community centric or even citizen centric. And the trouble is, all of our internal 'systems', whether they are financial, ICT or employment based are light years behind where we will need to be to achieve the type of extra-organisational flexibility we will soon need. There is much to be done!"